


Be It Feast or Famine

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 07:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15926105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: Inspired byBest Supporting Soulmate by Valeris.  Cisco Ramon has more soulmarks than anyone he knows. That doesn't mean he always feels the love.





	Be It Feast or Famine

Most of the kids in his classroom had one or two signatures doodled around their birthmarks and freckles. Genny, the girl with wide blue eyes, had three. Everyone thought that was so many and she bragged about it sometimes. 

Cisco had five. 

Most other kids had signatures with the same blocky handwriting of everyone else in elementary school, one or two had fingerprints where someone hadn’t yet mastered writing. They would age along with their soulmates, who somewhere else in the world were also gluing macaroni to paper. 

One of Cisco’s was written in the slanting letters of an adult, so thin and spidery that they were easy to overlook. _Harrison Wells_ left his two inch tall signature right across the nape of Cisco’s neck. It was probably the only reason his mother didn’t bother him about growing his hair long. 

“He better be a platonic one,” she’d mutter whenever she saw it, her nose wrinkled in disgust. 

Cisco didn’t tell his classmates how many marks he had. He grew his hair long to hide Harrison. He wore baggy shirts to keep the heart dotted eye of Caitlin which intertwined with backwards R Ronnie on his left arm. 

There was no hiding his right wrist where Iris with her lovely sweeping S and the barely legible Barry smeared over each other in the middle to join so tightly at the end that their last names were illegible. 

“Who has five soulmates?” Dante would roll his eyes when it came up. “It’s just greedy.” 

Dante only had one small signature jotted over his left collarbone. He wore v-neck t-shirts and smiled too wide at any girl with the misfortune to be named Julie. 

At least, Cisco though privately, he had a higher chance of meeting at least one of them. He wouldn’t be fruitlessly searching for that all meaningful connection his whole life. It helped him keep his chin up through middle school when the bullying was so frequent that he forgot there was ever time it hadn’t been there. It kept him going through high school, when his parents wouldn’t take any of the money they willingly threw into Dante’s performing career to let him go on the one robotics trip of the year. 

Sometimes it was a painful mantra through undergrad as he fruitlessly dated the few people willing to deviate from their destined names. 

“It’s not you,” Melissa told him, clutching a textbook to her chest. “Just...what would Derrick think if I didn’t wait awhile longer?” 

“Derrick might be platonic,” he said fruitlessly. “Plenty of people don’t marry their soulmates.” 

“But I don’t KNOW that yet.” 

No. Of course not. Because no one did. 

He kept to his classes and made a few friends here and there, passing trains in the night. Sometimes he’d look at his wrist where Barry and Iris’ last names intersected. Had they already met? Had Caitlin and Ronnie? 

Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all that their names were intertwined. He’d read every academic paper he could find on soulmarks, even taken the Introduction to the Unique Biology and Psychology of Soulmarks class, despite it being outside his major. Mostly what they all said, under big words and lots of numbers, was that even after a hundred and fifty years of soulmarks existing that no one knew shit about shit about them. 

“Bet they just met first,” Sarah said soothingly. Her soulmark was faded out to grey, a pale ghost on her jaw. Somewhere out there, a girl named Donna had died before they ever met. “It’s cool. To have so many. It means you’re really lovable.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” he flopped backwards on her thin mattress and stared at the cobwebbed ceiling. “You’re super lovable. It’s not your fault that fate has shitty timing and no sense of taste.” 

“Thanks,” she elbowed him with a laugh. “I think I’m lucky a little. I mean, I’ll never have that illusion ruined for me. I’ll never meet my soulmate and think...ugh? Is this it? I can imagine it’ll always have been that Hallmark moment.” 

But she sounded wistful anyway. Cisco hugged her and they both were quiet for a long time. 

“The thing is,” he said after a while, “either it’s some god like force that has an independent intelligence and does it for a reason OR it’s really weird genetic quirk that’s understandable in a lab if we can just figure it out. Either way, we can’t let some stupid bit of bad handwriting dictate our lives.” 

She kissed him. He kissed back. 

He had five soulmates, but none of them had bothered to show up yet, so fuck ‘em. They were together for seven months before Sarah was accepted to grad school overseas. 

“We could try long distance,” he protested as she gently broke the news. 

“You’ve got a lot of people waiting for you,” she smiled sweetly. “I’d just be in the way.” 

“But I love you,” he had the burn of future tears in the back of his throat. “And that’s real. Who cares if it’s not written on me. I’ll get a tattoo tomorrow if that’ll help.” 

“I love you too,” she hugged him for the last time. “But you have to give them a chance, Cisco.” 

By the time he finished grad school, everyone in the world knew who Harrison Wells was. It wasn’t hard to look up his signature. It wasn’t exact, but close enough that Cisco almost didn’t apply for the position. 

What would a genius of the once in a generation type want with him? 

But Cisco was really ridiculously smart. All his professors, even the ones that didn’t like him, said so. And he had good hair and four other soulmates, so there. 

He wasn’t surprised to get an interview. All modern companies blanked out names on resumes to protect against soulmate bias (like the guy who had hired every single Mary Smith in the tri county area as a dating service), so it was totally on merit and he was qualified out the ass, so there Professor ‘Cut Your Hair and Look Professional Mr. Ramon’. 

The day of the interview he was so nervous that he had to circle the building three times because he kept missing the parking deck entrance. He was still a half hour early. A brisk security guard led him to the top floor where all the offices had glass walls. Everyone else looked about ten years older and a hundred times more put together then him. He fidgeted with the cuffs of his black blazer, hiding his marks as much as possible. It was unprofessional to flash them around, he’d been told ad nauseam. 

“The candidate is here, Dr. Wells.” 

Cisco froze. He’d thought he’d be talking to a section lead at most. He wasn’t ready. 

“Ah, Mr. Ramon,” Wells didn’t so much smile with his lips, but suggest it with the curve of his body as he stood up. “Please sit.” 

“Thank you,” he didn’t reach out to shake his hand and Wells didn’t offer. 

It was hard to tell under the blur of questions and excitement, the overwhelming prospect and admiration for the man’s mind, but later Cisco thought....it hadn’t felt like anything. It was just meeting someone that he was primed to like. Wells was interesting, professionally polite and scientifically fascinating. Cisco didn’t particularly want to kiss him, so his mother won there. 

It was platonic then. But Wells had never mentioned anything about the marks (and they always came in pairs, right? Cisco re-checked all the literature, but there wasn’t one documented case of a mark on one person that wasn’t reciprocated on the other. That’s what soulmate MEANT). He resolved that he wouldn’t be the first to bring it up. Maybe it was a way of being professional. 

“What am I going to say?” he snorted when Sarah called to see how it had gone. 

“Depends on if you get the job or not,” she giggled. “Hey, genius, you didn’t hire your soulmate!” 

“I saw the security on that building,” he put his feet up on his desk, staring up at a picture of her. “I’ll probably never get that close again.” 

“Please. You’ll get the job. And you’ll have the big soulmate talk with him sooner than you think.” 

She was half right anyway. 

“Come in on Tuesday to sign all the relevant form,” Lily from H.R. went on after he’d finished literally jumping for joy. She sounded amused. 

“Yes, yes absolutely, what time?” 

“Let’s aim for eleven. The rest of the project team will be in by then and you can introduce yourself.” 

The paperwork was daunting as he signed himself into silence. Regretfully he wrote away ever telling Sarah about the tech he was going to work on, but on the other hand he’d be able to say ‘That’s confidential’ to his family when they picked at him, so that was cool. 

“Great!” Lily smiled at him like she had a secret. “C’mon. There are two people that are dying to meet you. And one less so, but don’t pay any attention to Hartley. He’s the youngest bitter old man alive.” 

“Oh yeah?” he grinned, happily following her down. Down. Down. “Where are we going?” 

“To your project. I’d tell you what it is, but they don’t let us plebes in on that sort of thing. I know it’s in the basement and I can’t go past the front offices,” she shrugged, seemingly unconcerned by the idea. The elevator opened into what could only loosely be called an office. It was more an amalgamation of desks and computers with those same glass walls. 

Standing at one desk was a ludicrous handsome man with just the right amount of stubble and a smear of grease on his t-shirt was talking to ridiculously beautiful woman in lab coat. Cisco’s skin buzzed, his eyes went hot and his mouth went dry. 

His bicep ACHED. 

“Cisco!” The woman turned and her face was somehow even more radiant and perfect when she smiled. She stood, her hands clasped tightly together as if to prevent them from reaching and grabbing. He knew the feeling. 

“I-” he choked. 

“I’m Caitlin,” and yes, of course this was Caitlin, whose signature lost it’s little heart somewhere along the way and became neater and neater until there was only the slight softness to the curve of her ‘C’. “And this is Ronnie.” 

“We’ve been waiting to meet you for a long time,” Ronnie held out as his hand as if to shake, but when Cisco took it, he was pulled into an enveloping hug. He smelled like Irish Spring and his sweater was very soft. 

It was probably really embarrassing to cry on your not even officially first day of work, but they were both crying too so that was okay. 

“Come sit,” Caitlin tugged him to a desk that was messy with wires and a monitor, but not a lick of paper in sight. “This is your desk. When Dr. Wells said who he’d hired, we wanted to go out and find you so it wouldn’t be such a surprise the first day.” 

“Unethical!” Lily chimed from the elevator, letting the door close before he could say goodbye. 

“It is,” Ronnie’s eyes crinkled up as he smiled. “So we waited. Barely.” 

“Do you want...” he touched his jacketed arm and Caitlin’s eyes widened hopefully. 

“Is it weird? Do you want to see ours first?” She was already tugging at Ronnie’s t-shirt. 

“Hey!” he laughed, but didn’t make any attempt to stop her. Cisco’s name was printed on a diagonal next to his belly button. There was a small scar through the ‘o’ in Ramon. 

“What happened?” 

“I tried to climb a fence,” Ronnie touched the mark, “I cried because I thought it might’ve hurt you somehow.” 

“That’s sweet,” Cisco choked. “How old were you?” 

Ronnie coughed. 

“Fourteen,” Caitlin supplied, face perfectly neutral. 

“Oh,” Cisco pressed his lips together to keep it together. “That’s...that’s really nice.” 

“Go ahead,” Ronnie rolled his eyes. Cisco burst out into the giggles and to his surprise, Caitlin and Ronnie joined him. 

They had great laughs. 

“Want to see what we’re all working on?” Ronnie asked. 

“Yes, please.” 

“This way,” Ronnie led him through the glass barricades and into vast echoing chamber, a monster semicircle of metal rising from the concrete floor. “This is our particle accelerator.” 

“No way,” Cisco turned to him, mouth agape. 

“Way,” Ronnie beamed. 

“This is literally the best day ever.” 

And it went on being the best day. Even after finding out that Caitlin and Ronnie were engaged and monogamous about it. They were so apologetic and wobegon about it that it was hard to be mad. Even after meeting Hartley, who was so instantly hateable that it was almost fun . And even after he met Dr. Wells again. 

“Mr. Ramon,” he said, not without warmth, but there was none of that immediate joy and...rightness that there’d been with Caitlin and Ronnie. Caitlin who had his name in the crook of the elbow and let him rest his fingers there while she told him about meeting Ronnie for the first time. 

“Hi, Dr. Wells,” he said awkwardly. He may not have the warm butterflies, but this was still one of his greatest idols. 

“Tell me what you think about the accelerator,” he sat down beside him and Cisco nervously then with increasingly confidence, explained the changes he would make to the schematic. 

“Um, and then I’d probably paint it black.” 

“Black?” Dr. Wells asked, who up until that point had been following Cisco’s train of thought with more ease than anyone ever. 

“For coolness and branding,” he offered lamely. “Because you always wear black...sir.” 

“Coolness and branding,” Dr. Wells repeated and Cisco wondered if it was possible to spontaneously combust. “Cosmetics are fairly far down the list.” 

“Right, of course. Sorry-” 

Dr. Wells leaned across the desk, pulled the schematic Cisco had been working on and with neat (but not capitalized, not like the signature) writing drew a small arrow pointing to the outermost shell of the accelerator and underneath it put ‘black’. 

“Good work, Mr. Ramon,” Dr. Wells leaned back and that was really very nearly an actual person smile. “I can tell you’re already a real asset to the team.”

“Maybe an ass-hat,” Hartley muttered once Dr. Wells had left. 

“That doesn’t even make sense, Rat-a-way,” Cisco rolled his eyes, too warmed from the compliment to take it seriously. 

Having soulmates was the best, he decided. 

“Who do you think they are?” Caitlin admired Barry and Iris’ signatures over dinner the next night. They were all still at the lab. It was possible that Cisco had slept there. 

“Dunno,” he looked at the blurred last names with more affection than he had before. “More science nerds?” 

“Probability is high, Captain,” Ronnie was laying on the floor, working on the underside the accelerator. Caitlin tossed a piece of balled up paper at his head. “Incoming projectiles! Raise shields!” 

“Shields at forty percent,” Cisco laughed as another piece landed right between his eyes. 

He didn’t lift up his hair and show her his last mark. Dr. Wells didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe it was a boss-employee thing or just a Dr. Wells thing, but if he didn’t want to say anything than Cisco probably couldn’t. Shouldn’t. 

He knew he loved Caitlin and Ronnie right away. It was the surety bridges and high rises were built on, giddy and accurate. He was mostly surprised by how much he liked them. 

“What did you think having a soulmate would be like?” He asked Ronnie late one night, when they were waist deep in the accelerator with no intent on going home anytime soon. 

“I thought it would complete me,” Ronnie twisted a nut into place. “When I was a kid, anyway. But I think now other people can’t do that for you.” 

“So what do we do for you?” Cisco twisted two wires delicately together. 

“You make life more bearable,” he said simply. 

It was hard to argue with that. 

For two years, he was suffused with the affection and care from Caitlin and Ronnie. All of his bottled up personality was allowed to explode outward, a shaken soda spilling sugar and bubbles everywhere. Dr. Wells let him think, they let him live. 

And then he watched Ronnie die. He had felt the warmth leave the mark on his wrist though grief support would tell him later that there was no physical change measurable in a soulmark gone grey. Ronnie’s name faded into the background and Caitlin’s signature stiffened and darkened in contrast. 

“He will be greatly missed,” Dr. Wells croaked from his hospital bed. Serious people in scrubs milled around floating words like ‘paralysis’ and ‘organ failure’. 

Caitlin shut down. Cisco channeled his energy into saving the sinking ship of the labs. Everyone abandoned ship, even Lily, who for two months took all the resignations with a kind word and thank you, eventually turned in her own. To Cisco, because there was no one else left. The great echoing halls closed down around him. 

“You should go,” Lily cajoled. “Any lab in the country would be happy to have you.” 

“I can’t,” he took the slip of paper from her. “But thanks.” 

The labs had buried Ronnie, Caitlin’s light, Dr. Wells’ mobility, and the greatest scientific leap in years. Cisco was mourning innumerable things, most without gravestones. He couldn’t leave it behind, unremarked. He taught himself to write press releases, pay the bills, and keep up with patent payments.He had to contract out for custodial services after everyone (probably wisely) walked out. With some serious alterations to the accounting software, he was able to automate a lot of it and at least keep the lights on and the floors clean. 

When he returned to work, wheelchair bound and tight-eyed, Dr. Wells signed every piece of paper Cisco put in front of him after only a cursory glance, 

“Good work, Mr. Ramon,” he said quietly and Cisco tried to push down the nauseating pleasure at someone acknowledging the ragged edges of tape he was using to hold the place together. 

Then he went to gather up the remaining love of his life.

“C’mon, Caitlin,” he chided her to her feet each night where she stared vacantly at a screen pretending to work. “Let’s go home.” 

He hadn’t meant to move in with her. He liked having his own space before. When they were three it made sense for them to have a place to be a couple separate from their triad friendship. Now, he came back to hers so often to make sure she was safe and fed that it didn’t make sense to stay separate. 

There was a guest room. It filled with his things and then he didn’t renew his lease. He never asked her and she never said a thing. He wasn’t even sure she knew. Mostly she drifted through life, alighting always close by, but never as there as she had once been. 

“I’m still here,” he wanted to scream at her. “And I lost him too.” But it was too much, too ragged, too bloody. He bit it all back and just made her dinner and tucked her into bed. Sometimes when he felt so lonely he could scream, he’d slip in beside her and close his eyes. Tried to remember the movie nights where they’d book end him on the couch, filling him up with so much love that he thought he’d burst at the seams with it. 

He hadn’t counted on how being filled would change his shape. How when it was gone, he’d feel all the loose and empty places like a tongue rooting for a lost tooth and finding only a raw nerve. 

Into that mess came the comatose body of Barry Allen. Somehow despite months of wasting away in a hospital bed, he still looked healthy enough to stand up at any moment. Even deep in the thralls of sleep, Cisco knew. 

“Hi,” he sat down beside him after Joe had left. He picked up Barry’s hand as Caitlin fussed over his vitals. 

“Hi,” Caitlin said absently. 

“Not you,” he said gently. 

“Then who?” she turned to face him, really looking at him for the first time in weeks. 

“Barry,” he hesitated then reached pulled the sheets up over Barry’s ankles. He thought he’d glimpsed the mark there when they’d moved him. 

Each bony limb was encircled by a signature. On the left, someone with the unlikely name of Eobard Thawne had written their name so viciously and deeply it looked like it might hurt. Each letter spiked up and down to near incomprehensible. On the right, looking just as bubbly as it did on Caitlin’s arm and once, on Ronnie’s stomach was his own bobbling lettering. 

“Oh,” she sat down next to him. “That Barry.” 

“Yeah,” he agreed, leaning against her. 

“We’ve just got all the luck,” she said wryly. “How come they didn’t say anything when they brought him in?” 

A woman walked in, holding a cup of coffee like a lifeline, her eyes fell to Barry’s bared legs. Her eyes narrowed,

“Were you gaping at Barry’s ankles while he’s unconscious?” 

Why were all his soulmates so much hotter than him? Was it too much to ask to have one homely person? Iris, and it had to be Iris who looked just as put together and competent as her signature, stood in the doorway. 

“Hi,” he said weakly. “I’m Cisco. We haven’t-” 

She was there in two long strides, raking her eyes over him from shoes to hair. He was exposed to her, he knew. She saw him in his totality. 

“I’ve got a boyfriend,” she said sharply. 

“Uh, okay? I’ve got a Caitlin?” 

“We’re not dating,” Caitlin said quickly. “Not that-I mean-Cisco is very dateable.” 

“Thanks,” he gave Iris a tentative smile and rolled up his sleeve. “I kind of guessed you were taken.” 

She took his arm. Her grip was firm and her skin cool. She placed a single finger where her and Barry’s signatures overlapped. 

“Oh, Barry,” she sighed as if her heart was on the verge of breaking. “He’s not my boyfriend. We were raised together. I thought we’d always-” 

“I’ve been told I’m pretty good at comforting hugs,” he offered. 

She didn’t take him up on it that day, but she did sit close enough to him that he could feel each inhalation. She smelled like a hospital and she never took a sip of her coffee. 

Iris didn’t become the center of his life like Caitlin and Ronnie had. She didn’t even spend a lot of time with him on purpose. Instead they would sort of wind up together, sitting vigil next to Barry’s bed. She told him stories about a hapless scientist type with a good heart and terrible time sense. When she’d leave to go home to sleep, she’d kiss Barry’s cheek and sometimes, if Cisco stayed very still, she would put her hand where her signature was on his wrist and give it a gentle squeeze. 

That was nice. She was nice. Or rather she was fucking amazing, a sort of true to life heroine that movies never got right. He tried not to love Iris with the desperation of a drowning man. She deserved better than that.

He even liked Eddie, whose signature was discreetly and compactly written on the side of her forefinger. 

“Never met anyone with four soulmarks,” Eddie brought them dinner sometimes. He even remembered to bring for Caitlin, who usually gave him a wane smile and poked at it with a fork. “Got to be a small club.” 

“I know a few,” Cisco always ate what Eddie brought. It was good to have someone looking out, even if it wasn’t one of his someones. “Most of them didn’t find everyone by twenty-five though.” 

“Guess you’re lucky,” Eddie flashed him that Hollywood leading man smile. 

“Yeah. Very. How’s work?” 

“We had a real car chase.” 

“Tell me everything.” 

Iris proofread Cisco’s press releases and taught him to make a cappuccino. Eddie told improbably wild stories. It wasn’t what he missed, but it helped to round the sharpest corners of his grief. 

By the time Barry woke up, Cisco felt like a reasonable first draft of the person he might become. 

“You’re Cisco?” Barry was a grabber like Ronnie. Hugged him tight and even though he reeked of antiseptic and feet, Cisco hugged him back. 

“Um, I’m really painfully hetero?” Barry said sheepishly when he started to pull away. “Sorry.” 

“Hey, who couldn’t use another best friend?” Cisco pat him on the back 

It went like this: Cisco loved Caitlin because she was smart, slow to smile, but quick to care. He’d loved Ronnie because he understood him, their work a simpatico that he feared would never repeat. He loved Iris because she had a clarity of purpose and believed that good would prevail. He loved Barry because he finally had someone who would watch all his movies with him, pick apart bad science, and praise his designs. 

Sometimes he wondered how he loved Dr. Wells. It shifted and squirmed in him, the embarrassing desire to please and impress. It was love that was returned in distant smiles and only the briefest physical affections. 

And none of them loved him back like a partner. For a man with five soulmates, he still slept alone more often than with someone. He told himself that was an enlightened man of the future. He could date AND have soulmates like all those forums said you should. 

But he didn’t. He was busy being a superhero’s assistant, best friend to cops, journalists, and doctors. Important people needed him to be where he was, all the time. He slept at his desk more often than in his bed anyway. 

“You were like a son to me,” the man who wasn’t Harrison Wells said to him in his dreams, before he killed him. 

“Wow. I’m getting really Freudian,” he decided. 

Then he did some late night googling about soul mates and murder that kept him from sleeping for awhile. Every time he tried, the dream just came back anyway. 

“Maybe it’s not just a dream,” Caitlin held his hand when he told her. She held it so tight and real and present for the first time in so long that he nodded along with her suggestion to tell Barry about it. 

Long ago and far away, Hartley had just been gone in the morning. Two years of irritation and rivalry and Cisco came in one morning to find Hartley's desk cleaned of papers, computer, and personality.

Folded down tight inside the cap of Cisco’s favorite pen was a piece of paper. 

_Sometimes the soul lies._ was all it said. Cisco had tossed it. Hartley had always been jealous of his soulmarks. The words ‘greedy’ and ‘show-off’ had been uttered often. 

Hartley’s soulmark was on the back of his hand, but it had been very deliberately tattooed over. A thick black brick without adornment so everyone would know what he’d done. It had burned in Cisco as a mystery, but he never asked. 

As he lay down to pull the weird goggles over his face that would drop him into his dream with Barry and Caitlin clinging to his hands so hard that his fingers felt numb, he wished he had asked. Chased Hartley down after the firing, waved the note at him. Demanded answers. 

Souls couldn’t lie. That’s why soulmarks were so prized, so cherished. It was what it was, without human intervention. Always in pairs, always someone that truly fit into your life. If that was a lie, what else could be? 

The letters on the back of Cisco’s neck were spidery things, tall and thin. Declarative, but easy to lose in the dark strands of his hair. 

“Eddie!” Iris wept in his arms and Cisco rocked her as his world shook beneath his feet. 

Caitlin didn’t speak. Cisco didn’t utter Ronine’s name. To have a name go grey then black then grey again was a new level of agony. There weren’t words for it. 

Eobard Thawne’s name went dull and grey on Barry’s ankle to match the loss of Eddie’s name on Iris’ finger. Now all his soulmates were a matched set, Cisco thought bitterly. All of them missing what should’ve been there. The world was a little dimmer, a little less. 

“We were soulmates,” Barry said hollowly. He couldn’t get drunk and Cisco couldn’t be bothered. So they sat on the floor of the Cortex, propping each other up in the middle of the night with nothing to blur the sharp edges. “And he hated me. What did I do?” 

“It was him,” Cisco shook his head. “You can’t blame yourself for something you haven’t done yet. He was the one that could’ve embraced you. Come back to the past to change things.” 

“I thought soulmates meant love.” 

“I guess he did love you, man,” Cisco folded his fingers together very carefully. “But he had it all twisted up in his head. There’s been cases. Of soul mates killing each other.” 

“Don’t tell me about them,” Barry tilted his head to look at him. “You don’t want to kill me, right?” 

“Barry,” Cisco let out a long breath that was almost a laugh. “Never. We’re for life in the good way. I promise.”

Barry never did promise back. That was the way of things with his soulmates though. Sarah had been wrong all those years ago. It wasn’t that he was lovable. It was that he was good at loving. He could prop up the amazing people around him when they floundered and when they grieved. They were his to carry and care for and that was okay. It was good even. There were far worse things in life than having a purpose. 

It took him months to work up the courage to get out a small mirror and stand in front of Caitlin’s bathroom sink. To see the fifth mark, he had to angle the mirrors just so. He braced himself for the greyed out spindly lines. It seemed reasonable to assume that with Thawne dead, all traces of Harrison Wells were gone and at last the spindley capitals would fade out. That was probably why they were so thin to begin with, he decided as he swept his hair into one hand. Wells had still sort of existed. A sort of Schrodinger's soulmate. 

It had changed, but not to fade. They were stronger now, thick black marks definitive and tall. His Harrison Wells was alive. Somewhere, in some way, he was. He went to Caitlin. 

“He’s alive.” 

“He’s really dead,” Caitlin countered, her eyes soft. “I’m sorry, Cisco. I know it must be harder for you then everyone else, but he’s gone.” 

“You knew?” He crossed his arms across his chest. 

“I saw it. The mark. A long time ago. But you didn’t talk about it. So Ronnie and I decided not to ask and then it was weird that we hadn’t asked and so much time had passed,” she grimaced. “I didn’t even think about it when you started having those flashbacks. I’m sorry.” 

“No, it’s fine,” he said thinly. “It’s just that you’ve got to be wrong.” 

She touched the thick black lines when he lifted up her hair. The single fingertip against his skin making him shiver. 

“He’s dead,” she said less certain. 

“Think there’s another guy out there that goes by Wells?” he challenged. 

“You never know,” she shrugged. “Maybe he changed his name?” 

“It would’ve shown, you know that. It’s the name you think of as yours. Maybe it’s Thawne that isn’t dead.” 

“Then Barry’s mark would be black.” 

It hung as an unsettling mark as the summer of their discontent melted on. Cisco and Barry marathoned movies at night when sleep was too elusive. He made Caitlin increasingly ridiculous meals to make her laugh and eat a little. He built Iris a barista bot to use on late night shifts so she could cram in more studying. 

The world kept spinning and he tried not to itch at the back of his neck. 

The Flash ran and ran. 

Then there was shark person (because of course there was, some days when everyone had gone home Cisco liked to have a short hysterical cry because it was so wild and fun and scary and horrible) and a man with a familiar face. 

“Crisco,” he said dismissively, already focused on Barry. Ready to forget him entirely. 

Second verse, same as the first. A little bit louder and a little bit worse. 

Cisco said nothing. He called him Harry to put distance between them. He watched the man rage, throw things, and generally act like a dick. 

Then he outed him. 

As soon as they were alone, Cisco turned on him. 

“You fucking asshole!” he hissed. Harry gave him an unimpressed look. “You had absolutely no right!” 

“To tell your friends that you have the ability to help us catch Zoom?” he asked dryly. 

“YES!” He threw his hands in his air. “That’s my information to share. If you want us to trust you, you can’t just throw me out of the meta closet to suit your needs!” 

“It was important! You were going to sit on something that could break all of this wide open. Because you were scared-” 

“You’re right I’m scared! I’m terrified! ALL DAY EVERYDAY!” the anger flowed out of him, repressed so long that it seemed to spew out of him with volcanic force. “I send my soulmate out into danger every day, building him things so he doesn’t die. I hid who he was from Iris even though she can strip me down with her eyes and I hate hiding myself from her. Caitlin is like a ghost of a person that used to love me. The only person I thought might be looking out for us, would’ve just as easily killed me for getting his way!” 

Harry stared at him, apparently he could hear anger even when nothing else got through. 

“I want to like you,” Cisco sucked in a deep breath and let it go. “I’ve loved all the others as easy as breathing, but right now I’m getting the whole Thawne-Barry dynamic honestly.” 

“What others?” Harry frowned. “What are you talking about?” 

“My other soulmates. I mean, I guess it’s you. Maybe there’s just fucking endless Wells out there and I have to keep meeting them until there’s the right one. I’m not sure if that’s depressing or relieving” 

“What are you talking about?” Harry, for once, looked utterly lost and baffled. 

“Soulmates? Soulmarks,” he tapped his wrist. 

“I thought this Earth had a bizarre tattoo culture,” he squinted at them. “So you just let people sign their names on you in permanent ink?” 

“We’re born with them,” Cisco stared at him, his heart sinking. “You don’t have marks.” 

“No,” Harry snorted. “That doesn’t even make any sense. Why would-” 

“Here,” Cisco snatched a usb off his desk and tossed it at his head. “You want to know the whys and wherefores, they’re on there. Every bit of soulmate research since the marks started appearing in 1882. I’m not here to be your Earth-1 wiki.” 

He turned on his heels and walked out. His eyes were hot. His throat hurt. He wasn’t sure why, but his feet took him to Lily’s old office. To the chair he’d sat in when she’d had him sign his NDA and told him there were people waiting for him. 

He curled up in the chair and rested his forehead on his knees. Outside there were super-villains, corrupt politicians, and revenge driven psychopaths. So how come most days it felt more dangerous to be inside? 

After a half hour, he shoved it all down, locked it up tight. He got to his feet. There was work to be done. He’d go back to the lab. There was work to do, and he trusted Harry to be a repressed enough weirdo that they could probably just keep on going like they had been. 

Cisco made it halfway to the lab before Harry intercepted him. He looked wild eyed, hair stuck up in all directions, 

“Is even half of what’s on that drive true?” He challenged. “You all just...know who your meant to be with? Fairy tale come true?” 

“No fairy tales,” Cisco said, fatigue weighing him down. “Just names. Just links. Just...potential.” 

“Show it to me,” he demanded.

“Show you what? You’ve seen Barry and Iris’ marks,” he ripped off his shirt, furious all over again. “There, that’s Caitlin and there’s Ronnie. Dead. Happy?” 

“Not those, Ramon. Show me.” 

He narrowed his eyes, “No.” 

“No?” 

“You’ve taken enough from me today. Get out of my damn way.” 

He started down the hall. Forget the lab. He’d go to Caitlin’s place where his things lived and get some sleep. Real sleep, not the fragments he barely managed to catch on the best of days. 

“Ramon....Cisco.” 

He stopped and sighed, “What?” 

“I met Tess when I was twenty-one,” Harry was staring at something over Cisco’s shoulder. Something far away. “I didn’t believe in soulmates. Neither did she. We were practical people. But I loved her more than...just more. Those files you gave me. That’s what it sounds like.” 

“I’m glad you had that,” Cisco rubbed his eyes. “Sorry you lost it.” 

“But you have five marks. Not one.” 

“Be a shitty world if you could only love one person.” 

“Your studies say that’s still unusually high. Nearly unheard of.” 

Cisco gave him a blank look, “What do you want me to say? Cause I’m not interested in playing explain the anomaly right now.” 

“Zoom has my daughter,” he said pained. “He’s using me to get what he wants with her as a hostage.” 

“Shit,” Cisco more fell onto then leaned against the wall. “Why didn’t you tell us? We would’ve-” 

“I was reading those files and thinking about what you said about being scared. I’m terrified, Ramon,” he said it like he said everything else, like the whole world was out to keep him in a state of constant irritation. “Just like you. She’s the only person left in the world that I love. How could I risk her?” 

“But you’re telling me now. Because you think...what? I’ll help you because you think I have some fairy tale delusion about love?” 

“I think you’re loyal. And I’m all out of loyal allies.” 

Cisco weighed a thousand nasty responses, but they all died un-uttered. 

“Yeah, but we have to tell the team.” 

“You could. I certainly deserve it after telling them about your meta status.” 

“Good thing I’m not into petty revenge then.” 

It was worse somehow, knowing that Harry knew. That Harry was looking at him, wondering where his signature was. Cisco didn’t give him the satisfaction. He kept his hair down and his eyes on the ball. Harry reluctantly disclosed his motivations to everyone else and they all doubled their intent on taking down Zoom. 

“Hey, you,” Caitlin sat down beside him a few days later. She was practically glowing. Her awkward flirtations with Jay had put a new pep in her step. She was holding a gigantic Icee.

“Heeeey,” he took the drink happily, taking a long sip. “What’s the bribe for?” 

“Can’t a girl get her best guy a treat for no reason?” She smiled hopefully at him. 

“I mean I’m not going to say no,” he eyed her suspiciously. “What’s up?” 

“I’m going to go on a date with Jay,” she blurted. 

“Uh, great?” he looked at her blankly. “You like him, he likes you. Should be fun.” 

“But...” she looked down at her hands. “What about Ronnie?” 

“What about him?” he leaned forward and took her hand in his. “Caitlin, he would want you to be happy. Ronnie wasn’t a ‘love me to the grave’ kind of guy.” 

“What about you?” she tilted up her chin and looked at him. 

Really looked at him. Cisco stared back at her and tried to remember the last time they’d held hands and just been quiet with each other. They used to do it a lot, back when things weren’t a constant marathon of bullshit. 

“Caitlin, I love you,” he said quietly. “Please try to be happy, whatever that looks like, okay?” 

“Okay,” she squeezed his hands. “I want you to be happy too though.” 

“I’m happy. Slap happy,” he smiled broadly, the goofy one. “Gadgets and gizmos aplenty. I got whosits and whatsits galore.” 

She didn’t look convinced, “You know, the original Little Mermaid ends with her dying, right?” 

“Yeah, that’s why Disney is better,” he snorted. “But in my version I’d make the drag queen octopus woman the hero.” 

“I’d watch that.” 

Time passed. They didn’t kill Turtle though Harry had had a worrying look on his face as he considered the option. 

Cisco travelled to another Earth. The least interesting thing about it was the lack of soulmarks. While Barry was out...being Barry about things, Cisco multi tasked in bothering Harry so he didn’t get so angry-depressed (angressed? That felt right) that he imploded and looking up interesting things to compare them. 

He looked for himself. 

And when he was face to face with Reverb, a man with no marks and no morals and maybe no soul, what scared him the most was how much he liked it. How much easier would his life had been if he was beholden to nothing and no one? 

“I could turn to the dark side,” he would tell Barry later and Barry would nod and assure him that it wasn’t possible. But Cisco could feel all of that under his skin, beneath the place where soulmarks could reach. All these claims on him before he could draw breath. Who would he be without them? 

“Why would you think I could be Frost?” Caitlin asked, outraged. 

“Because I could be Reverb,” he didn’t say. Because someday, the worst days, I already am. The days when I build cold guns to stop a speedster that I love. The days I think about power suppressants, and building better weapons. The days when all I can see is Ronnie’s face, and how he knew I was the one ensuring his death. 

“Just being stupid,” he said instead. 

At least they’d saved the girl. The very traumatized and angry girl. Jesse added a strange element to the lab’s delicate ecosystem. Harry was delighted and angry in turns himself, but at least became a more pleasant lab partner. 

“Ramon, why is your spatial collablalort all over my desk?” He dumped the very delicate parts onto Cisco’s workspace. 

“Because technically everything in this room is mine?” Cisco scrambled to gather them up checking for damage. “This is my lab, you’re a squatter and you’ve barely even been in here this week. Why can’t you just ask me to move my shit like a normal person?” 

“Everything in here is technically Mr. Allen’s,” Harry snorted. “I thought it was his name on the lease these days.” 

“Sure, and after we did that paperwork, who manages the bills and the press and the patents?” he snorted. “You think Barry took up accounting for fun?” 

“Apparently he can take up astrophysics as a hobby.” 

“Good to know your fragile ego is still stuck on that,” Cisco shoved the parts into a bin after giving it up for a loss. Not that the thing had worked anyway. Which Harry knew. Bastard. He leaned down to slot the bin into the rack. 

Harry made a sound little like he’d been punched in the gut. 

“What?” Cisco whirled around, hands already up to ward off an unseen attacker. 

“Nothing.” Harry took a step back. “Just keep your stuff on your side of the room.” 

“Want me to get tape so we can divide everything up? How do you run a company acting like a three year old constantly? Did they hire a nanny?” 

“Says the man that keeps his Harry Potter cosplay at the ready.” 

“Hey! Those books have some very adult themes, Professor Snape.” 

It wasn’t until later, when he was putting another bin away and had to swipe his hair out of his face that he put two and two together. Harry had seen his own stupid signature in it’s bold face loudness at last. A confirmation of something left hanging for months. 

Well, so what? Cisco decided he didn’t care. It didn’t change anything. There were other worries. 

Why just a few weeks later the world was ending again. Plenty to distract a guy with gadgets in his hands and loyalty threaded through his soul like iron. Harry gave him a hug before he left, accepting, kind, and over as soon as it had begun. 

When he finally made it back to Caitlin’s apartment, tired and filthy, there was a stack of mail on the counter. One cream colored envelope with his brother’s handwriting. He paused, flipping it around and around in confusion before opening it. 

Just a card with Snoopy on it, a nod to a long ago preference. ‘Happy Birthday, bro’ and a gift card to a game store. It was stupid and small, but it was so much all at once. His birthday was two weeks in the past, unremarked and forgotten even by him. But Dante had floated a little peace offering down the river. His stupid brother who forgot everything, had been the only one to remember. 

They grabbed drinks, sitting knee to knee in a sticky floored bar. They didn’t have much to say to each other, but it was comfortable in it’s silence. 

He won’t remember it. This night that they spend together. Because the person that’s supposed to love him, chooses his own happiness. Chooses his mother over an entire world. 

There was evening. There was Barry. There was morning. Dante was dead. 

For awhile, his life was sitting in a circle in the basement of church that glorified a god he’d never believed in. He listened to other people washed out with grief. Soulmates, partners, friends, people that had been untimely ripped away. 

Cisco listened. He talked. Caitlin drove him, her hands steady on the wheel. They listened to Ronnie’s favorite songs, a playlist he’d made that wrapped them up cotton nostalgia. She waited for him after with a treat of some kind and he didn’t need to thank her, it went unspoken between them. 

“I missed you,” he told her late one night when she’d pulled back the covers of her bed and ordered him in. 

“I’m sorry,” she rested her hand on his arm, covering over her name. 

It was a balm on his wounds. 

And then there was Harry. He walked in so casually, Jesse a zipping blur around them, as if he had never been gone. 

“Cisco,” he smiled saucily at him. Knowingly. Like he’d earned the privilege. “I want to show you something.” 

“Oh, yeah? What is it?” he watched him warily. 

“In the lab,” he didn’t wait to see if Cisco would agree. Just walked confidently in that direction, his backpack swinging from one shoulder like he owned the place.

Which somewhere else he did, Cisco recalled. 

“Being a billionaire get boring?” he asked. “Came back to see how the masses were doing?” 

“I came for Jesse.” Of course. Of course, Cisco sucked in a breath and didn’t feel punched at all. Not even a little. “And...and for you.” 

“Oh?” he really did feel punched now. In a good way. Was there a good way to feel punched? 

“This is what I wanted to show you,” and then Harry was lifting up his shirt and Cisco had to will himself not to get distracted because Gandalf and all his little hobbits, who knew the man would still be so lean and his happy trail so...happy. His eyes went a little cross. “Here.” 

One finger pointed to the arch above his hip bone. There was something there. A shadow. Cisco leaned in with a frown. 

“I thought it was dirt,” Harry explained. “Tried to wash it off, but no dice. It started appearing right before I left. I think the...feel of this world started to rub off on me.” 

In faded letters (not greyed out, not like Ronnie, not at all) as if they were rising up like smoke from inside to press against the milky skin was his own all too familiar signature. Cisco baked away, crossed his arms over his chest, 

“So? Nothing I didn’t already know.” 

“You grew up like this,” Harry sighed and pulled his shirt back down. “It’s all new to me. I took that flash drive home with me. I read through the studies, the histories...there’s a lot to digest. And...frankly, anthropology and sociology aren’t my strong points.” 

“Uh huh,” he kept his eyes on Harry’s face, the lines etched around his eyes. His thumb started to rub over his wrist, pressing down on Barry’s name. 

“But it makes sense,” Harry went on. “And you....you helped me find Jesse. You kept me calm and minimize the damage. I can see how you...you make me think clearer.” 

His nail pressed in too deep, a ragged edge catching the skin. Two drops of ruby red welled to the surface of the double ‘rr’. He thought about Ronnie that first day showing him the little scar. How he’d worried about somehow hurtin Cisco even though they hadn’t met yet. He missed him so intensely just then that his teeth throbbed with it. 

“Yeah,” he choked out. 

“So we must be...something. To each other. Because you do that. You make me better.” 

Cisco waited for more, but Harry just opened his hands as if to...what? Grab him? Hug him? 

“Great,” Cisco turned on his heels, “I’ll see you around.” 

Make him better. Yes, that was what Cisco was for, wasn't it? To be the catalyst for everyone else's reactions. The tinder for other people’s fires. He moved through the warren of empty offices and listened to the police scanner until someone called in a robbery in progress. He changed into his leathers and jumped through a portal. Villain punching was definitely on his agenda today. 

After a cathartic session of Portal whack-a-mole with a confused pair of would be jewelry thieves, Cisco gave his statement to an amused Joe. 

“And then you cuffed him,” he finished. 

“Any reason you thought we needed a superhero on this one?” Joe asked, eyebrow raised. 

“Uh, they might’ve been metas?” 

“Don’t breach me out of a job, okay?” he pat Cisco on the shoulder and he managed a tired smile for him. 

Cisco went home. He sat by the window in his room (still cluttered with unpacked boxes) and looked out over their city. Most of his life, Cisco hadn’t slept well and it had only gotten worse when his powers manifested. Since Dante died, everything had flipped around. He found himself sagging into a half-sleep state at the drop of a dime. 

Now he sagged against the glass, his eyes at half-mast. His thumb pressing hard into his wrist. 

His phone rang. He fumbled on the nightstand and was startled back to the waking world by the name. 

“Sarah? Are you okay?” he asked, voice rough and sleep deadened. They talked less and less these days, usually at pre-appointed times. She had her research and he had a life of secrets. It made a friendship tough. 

“Sort of,” she coughed. “Sort of under the weather. It’s ragweed season, you know how it is.” 

“Yeah,” he leaned back in his chair. “What’s up?”  
“I don’t know,” she sounded confused. “I was taking a nap and I just...maybe I had a dream, but I don’t remember. I just woke up and I had to call you.” 

“You psychic now?” he shifted away from the window to lay out on the bed. He was still wearing boots, he realized and sat up again to remove them. 

“Please,” she said dryly, “I think I’m just worried about my dissertation defense, and my brain is finding anyway at all to make it about something else.” 

“How’s that going?” 

“Who cares? It’s the same shit as always.” she challenged. “How are you? We haven’t talked since the funeral. And don’t say sorry, I know you’ve probably been balls deep in work to keep your head clear.” 

“Something like that,” he agreed. “It’s just been a complicated few months.” 

“You’re holding up though?” 

“Been going to group. The one you recommended,” he peeled off his socks, wrinkling his nose. “Caitlin’s been really supportive.” 

“That’s good,” she said evenly. She never really liked Caitlin. Had preferred Ronnie. Only heard stories about Barry and Iris. It had been years since they’d even been in the same country. 

“How are things with Josh?” 

“Eh,” she grunted. “He’s all hung up on how there aren’t guarantees for us.” 

“Soulmarks aren’t guarantees of anything,” he said dully. 

“Oh, I know that, but he doesn’t seem too,” she shifted, cloth rumpling. Maybe she was in bed in the dark too. Still muzzy from her own nap. It would be day time there, late afternoon. He could imagine her nested up, hair in a messy bun. In the dark, he could think she was just beside him. His oldest friend, holding his hand in the hazy place between sleep and awake. 

“I love you,” he told her because he knew now he had to be honest about how he felt and quickly. Time wouldn’t let you drag your feet. “You know that, right?” 

“Of course,” she laughed, “I love you too.”

They talked for another hour, meandering catch up kind of things. He closed his eyes when she said goodbye and woke up with the sun blazing in. Caitlin hadn’t come home or had already come and gone. He made himself a pot of coffee and sat on the counter to drink it in his boxers. 

His feet beat against the cabinets. Someone next door had the radio on, some morning DJ muffled through the wall cascading into the top 40. He didn’t recognize the song, but it had a good beat. 

Shower, shave, brush teeth, groom hair and eyebrows. Find the right t-shirt for the day (purple embossed with the face of Neil DeGrasse Tyson announcing ‘Y’all Motherfuckers Need Science’) and match them with skinny jeans in a forest green. Checkerboard Vans. Looking good mattered to him, even if not everyone appreciated his style. 

If the outside was right, it was armor plated over his fluttering heart. Caitlin walk in just about as he was ready to walk out. She had two huge coffees, 

“I heard you talking when I came in,” she explained, pressing one cup into his hands. “It was so late, I thought you might sleep in a little.” 

“I did,” he took it, wrapped his hands around the heat, letting it seep into his palms. 

“Okay,” she smiled. 

She drove them to the labs, and he drank his coffee. He tried not to think about seeing Harry again. He wasn’t sure how he felt now that it wasn’t so immediate. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from the man, but he didn’t think that Harry was capable of giving it whatever it was. Their friendship was fine. Fun even sometimes, but Harry was rough at the edges and veered into cruelty. Maybe a cruelty that he recognized in himself. 

He followed Caitlin to the Cortex lost in thought. He heard a buzz of activity as they approached and he quicked his step, assuming there was an incident in progress. He should’ve stayed, he kicked himself, instead of going home to brood. 

“Surprise!” 

A half ton of confetti and balloons fell down on him. For a split second, he panicked and had his hands halfway up to breach before he realized what was happening. There were yellow, red, and black balloons everywhere. A table had been dragged out of a lab and anointed with bowls of candy. He could smell pizza, from the good place in Star City, and it seemed like the whole team was there. Even Hartley was there, sandwiched in between Barry and Felicity. 

“Happy unbirthday!” Iris had a huge white flower in her hand and she slid it over his ear. 

“Um,” Cisco blinked rapidly. “What?” 

“It’s your unbirthday,” Caitlin was bouncing on her heels a little, looking bright and animated. “What with the world ending in late spring the last two years, I think we missed yours and that seemed wrong, so we’re doing it now.” 

“Oh,” he was finding it a little hard to breath. He sat down at his usual place in front of the bank of monitors. There was a pile of brightly wrapped gifts. 

Barry hugged him from behind, the familiar hard line of his chin on top of Cisco’s head, “Seemed like everything was quiet enough this week and we haven’t celebrated anything in way too long. So we wanted to celebrate you.” 

He swallowed hard and put his hand on Barry’s forearm. He was still angry, so angry that it hurt to think about, but Barry was still Barry. Still his hapless ridiculous speedy best friend. Who loved him. 

“Thank you,” he squeezed his arm gently. 

“No problem,” Barry kissed his cheek once lightly then dropped a big gift into his lap, “this is from me and Joe.” 

“Barry’s money, my idea,” Joe put in. 

Cisco tore into it and made pleased sounds over a really good pair of speakers that he could hook up in the lab. His last pair had blown out during a sonic experiment. There was a bottle of his favorite cologne (the last one lost in a shuffle of living spaces and never replaced) from Caitlin. He had last worn it out on a night with her and Ronnie where he’d fruitlessly tried to teach Ronnie even the simplest of dance moves while Caitlin worked to get them both very drunk. He sprayed it on immediately, reveling in the memory. 

Jesse had given him a sampling of candies from Earth-2 that she’d smuggled in her backpack, 

“I was going to give them to you anyway. Small price to pay for putting up with Dad’s bullshit.” 

“Yes, thank you, Jesse,” Harry said dryly. Cisco hadn’t fully processed that he was in the room and made no effort to look his way. 

There was gift from Hartley, a fancy pen that sat heavily in his hand, 

“You’ll just have to figure out what it does,” Hartley said smugly. “Aside from write, obviously.” 

“Obviously,” he repeated with a snort. 

Felicity brought him a fascinating set of circuit boards that he itched to play with, but set aside. The last was from Iris and he expected clothing maybe from the store they both liked. Instead, he was amused to find a mug, maybe a little more graceful than the usual mass printed fare, still oddly pedestrian for her usual taste. 

It had all five signatures of his soulmates printed on the rim and below it, in her own writing, 

‘World’s Best Soulmate’

“Even if I slurp out of it?” he blurted, the not breathing right problem returning in force. 

“Even then,” Harry said quietly, barely audible over the chatter. 

He buried his feelings in a slice of pizza and the cold glass of soda Caitlin put in his hand. 

“This soda smells like whiskey,” he realized. 

“Does it?” she asked innocently. 

“Caitlin, it’s ten o’clock in the morning.” 

“Cisco, when was the last time you had a drink?” 

He shot it down in three gulps and put his cup out for more. Before noon, he was very buzzed. Someone (Iris?) had braided his hair to keep it out of his eyes and Barry had dropped one of his CCPD sweaters over him so he was cozy in his chair. He and Hartley were having a quote-off as they went through Spaceballs. Cisco hadn’t missed a line yet, but neither had Hartley which was annoying and predictable. 

“You see Lonestar,” Hartley grinned at him, “Evil will prevail because good is dumb.” 

He was fairly sure Caitlin was filming the whole thing, but the joke was on her because Cisco had no shame. Felicity was judging the contest having proclaimed that it was unfair for her to join in when she would so clearly win. 

It was a very good morning. And afternoon. By the time he’d gone long enough between drinks to be something like sober, people had started to leave. It grew progressively quieter and Cisco got up to help Caitlin clean up. 

“Sit down,” she rolled her eyes. “As if I’m going to make you clean up your own party. Besides, Barry will do most of it.” 

“Barry will?”Barry pouted. “Barry doesn’t want to.” 

“Third person is the first symptom of turning villain, my man,” Cisco chucked an M and M at him, which of course Barry caught between his teeth and crunched it happily. 

Barry cleaned up in seconds, tetrising the leftover food into the fridge except the candy that was neatly bagged and set into the desk drawers around the Cortex. 

Caitlin puttered around, catching odds and ends, moving into the corridor to find stray bits of confetti. It left Cisco on his chair and Harry sitting down beside him. 

“You had fun today,” he stated. 

“Yeah, of course I did,” he waved a hand at the present still sitting in front of him, “who wouldn’t like this?” 

“They all love you a great deal,” Harry’s eyes landed on the mug. “Iris had to pay double to have that done overnight.” 

Cisco resisted the urge to stroke the thing, “That was really nice of her.” 

“She is very nice.” Harry cleared his throat. “They’re all...nice. Your soul mates. Except me.” 

“Yeah, well,” Cisco shrugged. “Can’t win ‘em all.”

“Is that why you don’t want me?” 

“Who said that?” Cisco frowned. “I never said that.”

“You walked out on me in the middle of my confession of affection,” Harry pointed out, annoyance leaking out around his every word. 

“Because it wasn’t about me,” Cisco looked down at his hands. “I try not to be selfish. I know I’m a supporting player for other people’s dramas, but it’d be nice for once if it was about me even a little.” 

“Cisco-” 

“Today was really nice,” he went on. “Really. I don’t know if it was your idea, but I’m going to guess you had a little something to do with it considering timing.” 

“I might’ve talked to Caitlin,” Harry allowed. 

“Might’ve,” he nodded. “And it’s sweet. But I know you, Harry. I know what you’re like. And I...fuck me, I do love it. I love that you’re a drama llama, who gets all my jokes. I love that your full of shit half the time and don’t care if someone calls you on it. I do. I think you're hot shit and if you’d showed up just a few years earlier, I probably would’ve gotten in to bed with you without even thinking about it. 

“The problem is that I’ve lived a few years that felt like decades. I’ve been going to therapy for a few months now, group and alone. And I’ve started thinking a lot about what I want my life to look like. You know what I want, Harry?” 

Harry mutely shook his head. 

“Didn’t think so. Bet it didn’t really cross your mind to even ask. That’s what I want. I want to be someone’s first thought. Anyone’s. I don’t want an unbirthday, I want someone to remember my actual stupid birthday. I want someone to ask what I want instead of deciding they know enough to just give it to me. I want Barry to consider me and Iris the next time something stupid runs through his head. I want Iris to look at me first when she walks into a room instead of at him once and a while. I want Caitlin and I not to feel like there’s a ghost between us all the time, keeping us apart. 

“I want....I want to be first. For someone,” he looked up definitely. “I want to come before someone else. So yeah, I love you, Harrison Wells. I’ll probably love every version I meet of you. But no, I don’t want you.” 

Harry’s mouth was pinched down into a line. Cisco waited for an explosion of anger, but instead, he got Harry moving forward, wrapping his hands around Cisco’s wrists and separating them. The scab over Barry’s name had started bleeding again. 

“Are you finished?” he asked calmly. 

“Let go of me,” Cisco demanded. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Harry kept eye contact with him. His eyes were not Dr. Wells’ eyes, but they could bore into him just the same way. “I’m glad you got a chance to say that. Seems like you wanted to say it to someone for a long time.” 

Cisco forced himself not to look away, “Maybe.” 

“Definitely,” Harry amended, “but now I get to talk. I think that’s still how conversations work.” 

“Not if you won’t let someone leave,” he tugged lightly at Harry’s hold. 

“You could blast me through a wall or drop me in the bay without much trouble. I’m not keeping you here,” he let go of one wrist and plucked a napkin out of his pocket before pressing it to the small spot of blood, “Listen to me, asshole. No one will ever be more important to me than Jesse.” 

Cisco nodded, tiredly. “Yeah, I know. I don’t want-” 

“Nope, my turn for talk, your turn for silence,” he said firmly. “Jesse isn’t a child anymore. She’s made that abundantly clear to me, trust me. And my role in her life has to change. She’s my most important person, but I’m not hers. She wants me to ‘get a life’ and ‘stop being the worst’ apparently.” 

“Good life goals,” Cisco nodded. 

“I need you for both of those,” Harry said firmly. “A lot. You do make me better, that’s the ‘stop being the worst’ part, but I also make you better.” 

“Impossible, I’m already too awesome to live,” he muttered. 

“I think given the speech you just gave me you think otherwise,” Harry picked up the napkin, dabbing around the wound to clear it. “I’m working on this whole ‘getting a life’ thing. Making you laugh...I...” 

The surety faltered and Harry just stared down Cisco’s wrist until Cisco fidgeted uncomfortably, “Do you need a hard restart? I can poke you with a paperclip?” 

Harry snorted, “You’re an annoying prick and I love that about you. I want you to be the best annoying prick you can be. I don’t want you to feel used when these idiots all clearly think you walk on water. When I hinted that maybe things aren't optimal with you Snow started to cry on me.” 

“Oh no! Tears!” Cisco grinned despite himself. “How uncomfortable were you on a scale of woolly sweater to ‘please let a meta show up and kidnap her’.” 

“Aaaanyway, my point is that as soon as they knew you weren’t happy they went absolutely apeshit. You slap on a happy face most of the time, they don’t even know what to do about it when they find out your sad.” 

“They should know,” he said mutinously. “I notice when they’re upset.” 

“Because they tell you. You make it comfortable for them to tell you. And you’re very good at dodging questions. At disappearing when you don’t want to talk.” 

He was about to protest, but considering very recent evidence he didn’t have much defense. He subsided. Harry produced a bandaid and put it over the scab with a practiced flourish. How many times had he bandaged a skin knee or elbow for Jesse? She seemed like a kid who had probably always gone full on. 

“Granted Barry is a dumbass of the first order, and inexcusable, but the rest probably deserve at least you giving them a chance.I hate feelings,” Harry pushed on. “But I’m willing to talk about them for you. I think your ridiculous hair looks pettable. I think your horrible clothes would look very good on the floor. I know you kick in your sleep from watching you nap at your desk and I’m still willing to risk spending the night with you. I want to pick your brain and build things with you, including weapons that’ll get us both in trouble.” 

Cisco clenched his hands into fists then released, it all sounded so good. So much...muchness. 

“What if it goes wrong?” 

“Then you can kick me out of your life. Off your entire plane of reality if you want,” Harry shrugged. “But I don’t think it will.” 

“Soul mates don’t necessarily stay together forever,” Cisco warned. “It’s not like that.” 

“I did read everything,” Harry rolled his eyes. “I didn’t grow up with all this shit, if you’ll recall. I didn’t have a convenient signature to tell me Tess was the one. Cisco, I LIKED being married. A lot. I like to think I was even good at it. I’m bad at people, but I’m good at partner.” 

“Then prove it,” he decided. 

Harry leaned in and kissed him. It was a really good kiss, hard to deny. Somewhere in the middle of it, Harry slipped his hand under the loosening braid and over the place his marks had lay dormant for so long. 

Despite himself, Cisco caved under the possessive hold. He’d give Harry his chance. Probably a few chances. 

Maybe all the chances he had. 

Maybe the world would come close to disaster by villains with familiar faces and timelines crashing into each other willy nilly. Maybe Caitlin would become someone new, who could never be warm again. Maybe Barry would finally apologize with martyring instead of words and maybe Cisco would go a little crazy trying to get him back. Maybe Iris would gain and lose and gain and lose faith, clutching too tightly to Cisco’s hand. 

Maybe through all of that Harry would be his dark shadow. The person who was there when he looked up. The one who was always already looking at him when he emerged from his work to find him. 

Maybe Harry was the best at making life more bearable. 

Cisco had five soulmates and that left open a thousand world of maybes. He kissed Harry until Harry drew him into his lap, pressing them close together. Too close for even light to get between them.


End file.
